Psychology Experiments - Birkbeck Migraine Study

Birkbeck Migraine Study

This task runs better under Firefox or Chrome browser, please consider changing your browser for this task.

If you are already registered in the study press Continue

Welcome to Birkbeck Migraine Study

Aims:

This experiment aims to track changes in visual perception over several months. We are looking for people who are prepared to participate regularly, ideally daily or every other day, over several months. We aim to track changes over time in performance on objective measures of visual perception, and associate any changes with occurrences of your migraines or headaches. If you wish, we will enter you into a raffle at the end of the experiment: you will be entered into a draw where five £50 gifts will be prizes in a raffle. You will be eligible to enter the raffle if you complete the study.

Please tick here if you wish to be entered into the raffle. You will need to complete the experiment daily, or at least every other day, over four months, from the date when you first register to take part in the study. If you cannot commit to four months, please do consider starting the experiment anyway as, whatever you can contribute to the study, will be included in the analyses.

Name of researcher: Dr Alex Shepherd

This experiment is being conducted by the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London. The study has received ethical approval from the Department’s ethical committee.

The experiment has two sections. During the first session, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire that asks about your headaches, your reading experiences, and other sensory symptoms that people can experience. Then you will be asked to complete four visual tasks. Two tasks asks you to judge the direction of motion of a cloud of moving dots. The other two tasks ask you to judge the orientation of short line fragments (vertical or horizontal, or oriented left of vertical or right of vertical).

On subsequent sessions, you will be asked a few simple questions about your migraine/headache history since you last participated, and then you will be asked to complete the four visual tasks again. Ideally, we would like you to complete the visual tasks at about the same time of day on consecutive occasions, although this is not essential.

The first session should take you approximately 20 minutes to complete. The subsequent sessions should take approximately 10 minutes to complete.

If you wish, we will send you a summary of the results upon completion. If we can identify changes in your performance associated with migraine or headache proximity to the test session, you may find this useful if you wish to learn to manage when your migraines or headaches occur. Please tick the box below if you would like to be informed of the outcome of the research.

I would like to be informed of the outcome of the research

All data are confidential and will be anonymised. You will not be able to be identified from the data collected, nor from any publications that may result from this research.

With any visual display, there is a very slight chance that you may find them unpleasant and they may induce headache if you continue to look at them. This is very unlikely and, if you do find any of the displays unpleasant, please leave the experiment immediately.

If you would like any further information, please contact Dr Alex Shepherd (perception-study@bbk.ac.uk) who will answer any questions.

Departmental address:

Department of Psychological Sciences,
Birkbeck, University of London,
Malet St,
London
WC1E 7HX

TEL: 020 7631 6212

Please tick all of these boxes to confirm that:

	You consent to take part in the experiment
	You understand you may terminate your involvement at any time
	You understand the nature of the tasks you will undertake and have had any questions answered to your satisfaction
	You are over 18 years of age
	You have good eyesight in both eyes (with or without glasses/lenses: i.e. can you read the back of a cd case held at arm’s length with each eye separately?)
	You do not have, or ever had, a squint or amblyopia
	You are not taking any daily, centrally acting, medication other than something that has been prescribed for migraine
	If you take daily medication for migraine, please specify what you take on a daily basis
	You have no neurological or other condition that can affect vision (other than migraine, if applicable), such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, lupus, diabetes, macular degeneration
	For the experiment to work we need to store cookies in your browser. Please tick this box to accept cookies and the storage of personal data according to the College GDPR policies.